A Class Policy on AI Hallucinations

 

As I noted in my last post, a student in my May-term class committed academic dishonesty in a reading journal I'd sought to make AI-resistant. This to me is a more serious issue than turning in work an AI generated. Why is that?

In my course, I provide careful guidelines for how students may use AI to help them. For instance, since today's undergrads are generally awful readers, I allow them to employ AI to help them understand themes in readings and connections between readings. Some students in their evaluations noted that the graded work here "forced them" to do their readings. 

Yes, readers, thank you for reading this post. Be advised that many college students no longer do any class readings, unless forced, even at selective institutions. To me, that's a gateway to a new Dark Age, nothing less.

My method, following my rules for multiple-entry Google Workspace reading journals, requires students to fill one column with a quotation or summary of a key event, a second column with an analysis of the event, and a third with a question to bring to class. I also include a mandate to comment weekly on a peer's journal. I got this notion from John Bean's excellent book Engaging Ideas; you can learn more in the third edition of Bean's classic, with his co-author Dan Melzer.

The student who misused AI had done good work for earlier assessments, yet for the final one asked an AI to find notable quotations. That was not against my policies. What was? In two instances, the AI invented direct quotations not in the readings. The writer, too harried or too complacent to check, did not do a word search of the originals.

I gave the writer an F on that assessment, which pulled down the final course-grade. In my reasoning, I said that had that occurred on the job, the student would have likely been fired. Best to learn that ethical lesson now, while the stakes were relatively low (though to a perfection-obsessed undergrad, the stakes may have seemed high, indeed).

We discussed the matter in a cordial way; the writer had done well on earlier work but for reasons still fuzzy to me, failed on this final assessment. So in future classes, I'll change two things. First, my policy on AI hallucinations will be harsh; if the assessments are as frequent as in my recent class there will be no chance at revision. In ones where assessment is less frequent, the F will be applied but the writer will get to revise the journal and I will average the two grades.

Second, I'll add a new requirement for synthesis with earlier readings: yes, a fourth column! This skill is woefully lacking in students, who seem unable to construct consistent narratives across the work done in a class. This I attribute to a "taught to the test" mentality in high school as well as a disconnected learning experience and, for some, lack of passion for learning afterwards.

As for AI hallucination? Though Ethan Mollick and OpenAI claim that larger models hallucinate less now than in the early days, I'm not so sure. Mollick tends to use what I call "concierge" AIs that cost quite a bit; my students generally use a free model and do not engineer their prompts well. 

You can read more about a comparison of different LLM models and hallucination here. I still feel that we remain a long way from knowing which LLM to trust and when, but the OpenAI article does provide good tests we humans can apply to check the AI's output.

Always check its work. My student did not, and paid a price, rightly so. 

Image from the film Vertigo. 

Ohio State Takes the AI Plunge

A colleague in senior administration at OSU sent me a notice about their new AI initiative.

It's so at odds, in a healthy manner, with the "just say no, hard no" of the CCCC Chair's April keynote on AI. While I'm encouraged about a new CCCC working group formed on AI, as with so many things run by faculty, it's going to take time to spin up, while administration and industry race (perhaps unwisely) into adopting this technology. I'm going to chuckle at the negative stories such as one from The Columbus Dispatch, picked up by MSN, calling it a "betrayal" and claiming that AI is being "rammed down students' throats." 

Have these reporters even looked closely at student use?

Let's just assume it's nearly 100%. My 3rd annual student survey says as much. We need to address that reality and do so ethically and in a pedagogically sound manner. Maybe that's where we can critique this or similar initiatives. I remain the wary adopter, not an enthusiast.

So what are the broad outlines of the OSU plan, to be unfolded this Fall?

• Units on AI fluency in a seminar taken by all students.
• Support for faculty to incorporate Generative AI into classes. I do not see a mandate for all faculty.
• Building upon an “Embedded Literacy" in all majors. Read more about them here. This will likely be strengthened to include appropriate and ethical use of AI in the discipline of the major.
• Partnership with industry.

So why the pushback? 

Perhaps the details are too vague, the timing too sudden and rolled out over the summer when many faculty and students are away.

Yet this development has deep roots; OSU is a Big 10 and a land-grant; they have long partnered with companies to help their students develop skills needed in the workplaces of their era. Though I taught for nearly all my career at a liberal-arts university, I hear already from adult learners that in their jobs, AI fluency no longer remains an option. New hires are expected to have some fluency or go elsewhere for a first job.

Are we caving to corporations? Only if we let them set the terms of engagement. We have adopted new technologies before our way, by providing open-access Internet resources, releasing materials into the Creative Commons, and pursuing innovations with mobile computing. I still live by those rules, never putting a syllabus into BlackBoard's gated community. My content is on the open Web for all to use. That was the promise of the early Internet. I hope we can do something similar with AI.

I just finished a course that focused on deep-reading techniques for literature. We used AI for two assignments, but the reading journal, done as a Google Doc and commented upon by peers, proved hard for AI to assist. One student leaned too heavily on AI on a final set of journal entries, and it hallucinated quotations that do not exist in the texts the student then analyzed: an F on that assessment proved penalty enough. I reminded the student, in essence, "on the job, you'd have been fired. Here it just reduced the final grade."

The students had to employ critical-thinking skills beyond summary and analysis to find "need to know" questions to bring to class discussion, where 50% of their grades came in the form of participation.

AI cannot do that. But without learning to use AI ethically and effectively, my students won't land jobs in a few years. So there's my pushback: no matter the basis for objecting to AI, college involves helping students start careers. It does so much else, too, but without employed alumni, the entire enterprise of higher ed would fold. 

Let's see where OSU goes with this venture. 

Image: OSU Seal via Wikipedia 

 

Finale for Usher & Teaching in Virtual Worlds?

Location: Virtual House of Usher

Is it to be "that's all, folks," in the immortal words of Porky Pig?  In twenty minutes, I start what may be my last-ever work with students inside a virtual world.

We'll see what the future brings, but for now, I'm betting on the Pig. Here's the final scoreboard from the students. Three students not only found eggs but solved the quest therein. Nicely done, Gunters!  Divij in particular came on strong with his work to lift the curse from his "bad egg."

Two More Hidden Clues for the Egg Hunters

Location: Undisclosed

Here are two final clues for the FYS 100 students' hunts. Since the House of Usher is full of clues (see image above), it is fun to hide a few in the physical world.  Rumors abound that two of yesterday's eggs have been found. I will post a score-board here as soon as I hear back from the lucky "Gunters."

Note that over the weekend, I'll have more posted that will not involve a physical egg but a hunt through the work of Ernest Cline and Edgar Allan Poe.

Clue #5: “Begin at an arcade you should know well by now. You will see us, since George did not chop us down. A week or two ago, we were in the fullness of our springtime beauty. Now we are like the others, except that one of us hides an egg.”

Clue #6: “What’s in my pocket? Everyone asks me but I never answer them. But if you follow my nose to the center, then turn right and think about Christmas greenery mentioned in a carol, you might find a clue!”

Let the House of Usher "Egg" Hunt Begin!

Location: Undisclosed Location

For the House of Usher simulation, we've always included clues in the virtual House itself. Now for what may be the finale for the project, at least in my courses, I've put some real-life clues here and there on our campus. I suppose this is what game-theorists call (awkwardly) "gamification" in classes.

Students will hunt campus for the clues, the first four of which appear here. If they find a light bulb they get a point and a quest that will help them in the Usher simulation.

Even before we read Ernest Cline's light-hearted cyberpunk (that's not a typo) novel Ready Player One, I was calling them "Easter Eggs," in honor of the little gifts that coders leave in games.

In Cline's novel, those seeking the eggs became "Gunters." Alas, the craft store was all out of plastic eggs. They had little containers shaped like plastic light-bulbs for the clues, an appropriate metaphor.

Here are the first four clues, Gunters!

1. “Above the Court of the Five Lions, and in a place of honors, there is an egg with a song to awaken the dead”
2. “Climb many stairs to go to a room of Gargoyles. A treasure is there and a magical word”
3. “In the Jungle, the mighty jungle....” If you can finish this sentence, you may well find an egg to help you on your quest.
4. “Do not go here to kiss, the legend says, unless you intend to marry him or her. Look carefully, and below the surface for the egg.”

More on the way! Happy Hunting!

What Simulations in Education Would Santa Bring YOU?

Location: VWER venue

It will be a fun meeting tomorrow, with the topic "Tell Santa: What Simulation Do YOU Want in STEM, the Arts, Humanities, or Social Sciences?"

Cue the ho-ho-ho music, cause I'm your Santa Claus as seen on TV.

I hope to publish a list of what we've never seen in any virtual world or have lost, such as the King Tut exhibit in SL's build of Heritage Key. That was a stunner.

Can't make the meeting and would like to suggest some simulations? Post 'em right here and naughty or nice, you may at least get your wish heard!

Bringing SL Back to the Conference Room?

Location: Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable

Celia Pearce image from her Web site
Tom Boellstorff image by Olivia Hotshot

I'm pleased that VWER will again host Tom Boellstorff, author of Coming of Age in Second Life, and Celia Pearce, author of Communities of Play, will be guests at a special meeting on August 30, 12:30 SLT. To teleport to the venue at Bowling Green State University in SL, click here.

Tom was an excellent guest before, and we'll all put questions to him in a voice-chat event hosted by AJ Kelton. I'm reading Pearce's Communities of Play now, and I'm looking forward to the two scholars next project, Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method.

This time, with two noted scholars and a venue that could be comprehensible to those without avatars, I have offered to show the meeting in one of our conference rooms on campus. Faculty and staff should then see the potential of virtual worlds for the sorts of meetings that would be hard to arrange and moderate on the fly in real life.

Given my experience with conferencing software, I also feel that virtual worlds offer a better venue that encourages less passivity. There is something powerful about embodiment, even as a cartoon character, that gets folks to talk back in a meeting.

From Scratch, Key Elements for an Educational Virtual World, II

Location: VWER meeting

In my last post, I focused on the in-world features of an educator-built virtual world. Next week we'll debate that as well as this second big aspect of design: technical requirements. My suggestions for a virtual world that would please students and not hurt faculty evaluations:

• Laptop + Wireless: Desktops are as dead in dorms here as are land-line phones. If an application cannot at least run on a laptop untethered from any cables (power cables too: students travel light) the application may as well not exist.  Students will seek out a desktop work station for projects requiring high-end apps, but the don't and won't own such. Try requiring students to visit a lab a few hours weekly, outside of class, to log into a virtual world many would find "creepy" anyhow. I'm glad I'm not you when evaluations are given.
• Fast, Easy Start: the world must be drop-dead easy to install. No tweaking the viewer, no need to upgrade video cards. It must work right away to retain the attention of students and protect the course evaluations of their faculty.
• Cross Platform: The Mac OS has jumped on my campus from 5% in the mid 90s to at least 40% two years ago. I now hear, but don't quite believe, it's at 70%. Clearly, any virtual world for students in higher education must work on a variety of operating systems and types of hardware, thus:
• Browser Based: Cloud Party's use of WebGL as its basis trumps Second Life, which in its current form is nigh impossible to run in a browser. Making the world browser-friendly eases the leap to tablet computing, if this part of the market does replace the laptop for many users.

What have I forgotten?

From Scratch, Key Elements For an Educational Virtual World

Location: Thinking Cap in Place

After my few posts about Cloud Party and Glitch, I began pulling together a list of features that I'd want in a virtual world if I had unlimited funds and time to build one myself.

I plan to put this list of features to the vote with colleagues in VWER, before we hold a meeting about "What I learned from a silly game called Glitch" early in August.

• User-Generated Content: The killer feature for virtual worlds used by educators. We can make and share our creations in a world that is, essentially, a big sandbox
• Collaborative Permissions: Creators can transfer full ownership for shared builds so backups and exports are possible. Mixed-permissions builds in Second Life are a nightmare
• In-World Building with Simple Tools: Again, for collaboration this seems very popular with educators
• Offline Building with Professional 3D Tools: For advanced builders with 3D modeling skills
• Local Hosting Options: Educational Institutions like to own their hardware and make backups frequently
• The Illusion of a Contiguous World: World maps are available for Glitch, most OpenSim grids, and Second Life. In Cloud Party, to my knowledge no map is available
• Several Means of Travel: All virtual worlds include point-to-point movement such as teleportation.  Those making simulations in a world, however, should be able to turn that feature off, so participants are forced to walk or ride to a destination. Second Life manages this well with settings for parcels and regions
• Freedom of, and From, Adult Content: This will be contentious even among educators. I'd suggest that pornography is not needed in an educational world, but adult content, such as art-museum nudity or discussions of sexuality, is necessary for many educational purposes
• Simulations Tools, Including a Physics Engine a Combat System: My students asked for this again and again in reviews of my House of Usher simulation. In realistic simulations, bad decisions have consequences.  Avatars in these settings should get tired, hungry, injured when appropriate. They might be able to "level up" for accomplishing goals in a course or assignment. This idea got suggested in Edward Castronova's Exodus to the Virtual World and I like it a lot
• Simple Help Tools: Glitch wins on this. The designers' humorous approach to FAQs and the Pet Rock charm me every time I log on.

What did I forget? Sound off!

A Closer Look at Glitch, Reloaded

Location: Cebarkul and Far Afield

I will admit, in starting this post, that some of the material was probably in the pre-Beta Beta (or whatever the heck it was) that I played. But I'm liking the following aspects of Glitch. I'm assembling ideas for a future VWER meeting in which we actively plan beyond Second Life and OpenSim, to the features of the virtual worlds we educators would design.  My last two trips to Glitch have been far better than what I experienced last year and earlier this year. I noted, in my entry about Cloud Party, that the side-scrolling interface and lack of realistic avatars were detrimental to my fun.

But Tiny Speck, who makes Glitch, have added depth to the game by giving players more information in an as-needed and funny way. And a little house to call home. So here goes with the features I like so far:

References at One's Fingertips: An Encyclopedia is available even before the player enters the world. Glitch's cute backstory has some surprising complexity. Thus the entry on the Giants helps a great deal, given the game's location: in their giant heads.

I was able to find out a bit quickly about the paths open to players, because a Glitch (the name of our little peopleoids) must chose a series of linked skills at some point. With the reset I'm back to level 2, but I'm thinking that as before, I'm going agrarian with skills related to animals and plants. Note that one's Pet Rock gives hints. Mine suggested that I become a "Porcine Pleaser" when I clicked the "show me" button below, even as it gave other advice about how to become a more effective Glitch:

There are oodles of skills in Glitch. but from the Web profile for each player, a refresher of what the Glitched learned and can do is as easy as clicking the timeline, as I did for one of the first skills I acquired, Animal Kinship I. Each accomplishment can then be Tweeted. I did that for my Hen Hugger badge. I know the world stopped on its axis when that Tweet appeared.

Simple and Clever Menus: Compared to Second Life clients, with their dizzzying array of choices, Glitch's are straight forward: a "player" menu with a character's stats and links to content, and an "imagination" menu (shown at the start of this post), with choices for learning skills and going on quests.

In comparison, it would take a Type A Cyborg to love the menus in Firestorm, let alone its "Advanced" menu.

Everyone Gets a Home Base and Collaboration Reaps Rewards: For now at least, all Beta accounts in Glitch include a home street. My Pet Rock told me that if I can get other Glitches to collaborate on projects on my home street, I get more benefits and bonuses.

For educators, collaboration is a key to Constructivist pedagogy. So any online environment that fosters it would be preferable to one fostering competition.

Humor that is not Cloying:  Way back when, the Lindens had snowball fights with residents in Second Life and have a shared account called "Pony Linden." Once at VWER John Lester (then Pathfinder Linden) showed up as Pony and explained that Linden employees took turns as Pony to greet and entertain newcomers, even offering rides.

Those days are long over and Pony Linden's account was sent to the glue factory.

Conversely, in Glitch my Pet Rock and every darned menu pokes fun at me and itself.

And, yes, there is a Shrine to a giant named "Pot." I thought I had imagined that last time:

Round of belly and capacious of stomach Pot is the Giant of Prosperity, with dominion over anything edible, cookable, munchable or nibbleworthy. Pot himself is not munchable. Do not attempt to munch any giants.

Every time I log out of Glitch, I'm warned "Wait! You were just about to win the game!"  I think that in terms of learning what a good virtual world should offer, I have already won. I'm far from an overarching theory about why I so like Glitch, in much the same way I liked Metaplace. At this point I only have a suspicion. Glitch lacks the gravity and gore of "serious" gaming, the festering drama that is today's Second Life, and the frenetic chase-the-monkey of most side-scrolling games.

There's some stoner magic at work in Glitch, some parody of Philip Rosedale's dream of a perfect online world. By not taking itself so seriously while fostering collaboration and non-violence without earnestness, Glitch charms. That may be utopia enough.

Jumping into Jibe

Location: Pathfinder Lester's Home, Jibe

In class on Monday, I plan to discuss why I don't think Second Life or OpenSim are good venues for Writing Center work.

I've blogged about my reasons here and then, later, after reading an article about a centers' use of Second Life, I reconsidered. A virtual world might be JUST the venue for a gathering of writing tutors between schools.  They would not be there to look glamorous or roleplay as elves. They'd be there to chat about ideas, as they would in a face-to-face conference.

A conference of this sort does not require a world and a persistent set of avatars.  A one-off event in something like Reaction Grid's Jibe might be perfect, and with a team of developers I could see setting up a conference venue that small or large groups could use year after year.

So in class Monday, my students won't see a hard-to-master user interface best suited for collaborative teams building in a virtual world.  They'll see something that can work with a Web browser and a plug-in.

I remain skeptical about Jibe and Unity 3D when mainstream-techie faculty like me wish to do building, especially in collaboration and in real time. As I've often stated, I am not evaluated on my 3D modeling skills. Thus, I don't plan to master the complex tools to make these models, no more than I plan to master LSL scripting. Unlike Photoshop or Dreamweaver (and hand-turned HTML code) these 3D applications do not yet figure into my daily work and annual evaluation.

But for such a conference venue, where pedagogical decisions are not vital, I'd be happy to hire out the work and focus on the content we'd share from the other side of the screen.

Update 4/17/12: Jibe was very jumpy indeed on a wired connection and a decent Windows 7 desktop. While downloading the Unity plug-in was a snap, the rest of the experience was very subpar. My avatar could not walk, lag was enormous, and after lots of fumbling I managed...to sit in a chair.

My students were not impressed. Sounds a lot like Second Life under bad conditions.

Technology & Learning: A Question of ROI

Location: Old-Timey Internet 1.0 & 2.0

Quite often, educators discuss the shortcomings of virtual-world technology or providers. These factors stymie or end good work in these environments.

But have we looked carefully at ourselves and our schools? Where do they hinder or stop our work?

Last week, I had to skip the VWBPE sessions after the first day.  The conference has always been inspiring to my work with virtual worlds, during the past three years, and I was certain it would be again.  Except things have changed.

Last weekend, instead of going to sessions at VWBPE, I turned my focus on a report to a granting agency, about a mix of Web 1.0 and 2.0 technologies we are deploying at Richmond and Furman University. Faculty like the demo pages, some simple thesis-formation exercises and a video by my colleague David Wright about the art of crafting an effective thesis. More such materials are on the way.

When I was not writing the report, I and two student assistants were putting finishing touches on several of the actual materials. They will be used in classes starting this Fall and will "count" in my annual evaluation. VWBPE, where I presented the last three years, has not seemed to count as a "real conference" with my evaluators. This year, I lacked time but also an impetus to submit a proposal because my latest article, on the politics of Writing Centers and curricular change, has been through no fewer than four drafts. It is about to go to a journal's board of readers.

About ROI and Educators

The irony of this change in my focus has not been lost on me. At one time, Immersive Public Virtual Worlds were labeled "Web 3.0" by many folks eager about the potential of Second Life. Many of these evangelists, including our own campus' Instructional Designers, created avatars and explored SL in 2006-8. Some of these folks are now either focusing on gaming or, like me, designing again with the first two generations of Web technologies. Many others are working on the integration of mobile technologies in education. Indeed, as Nick DeSantis reports in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the moment for online education and edu-tech start-ups has arrived.

Is this all a case of chasing the latest "shiny object" or, perhaps an older one that had been neglected?

For me, the decision to scale back work with Second Life and OpenSim comes down to "return on investment." Business folks think of this constantly. Many evangelists in the realm of virtual-worlds learning have not.  I cannot speak for many colleagues off campus, but for my local colleagues, these challenges have remained daunting after 5 years:

• Time to learn the UI and world: I have long advised educators new to Second Life to spend a semester in world before bringing in students.  And for some colleagues I taught to use SL, even moving to a new viewer was troublesome. One just threw up his hands, when asked to put in grid information into Imprudence for OpenSim. "This is not going to work for me," he said.  And we were done.
• Time away from what evaluators assess: For tenure-stream faculty, this sort of time-commitment to master an ever-changing set of applications is not possible. One reason that DeSantis is correct about a technological boom on campuses comes from ubiquity: many of the applications he mentions are common, stable, and familiar to students, staff, and faculty (such as digital textbooks or teaching tools driven by Facebook). When it comes to virtual worlds, however, even for faculty with tenure, engagement means time not spent attending to daily business for which we are evaluated. Tenured faculty might find the time, but that means time away from an article likely to lead to promotion.
• Time to learn content creation. This is even more daunting, especially for those virtual worlds that require 3D content-development programs such as Blender or Maya.  Unless one already uses these tools as part of one's daily business, go straight to points one and two.
• Eyes on the Prize(s). The work done in a virtual world cannot currently reach a mass audience, except by a YouTube Machinima.  Older-variety online content can reach a large audience because is searchable by search engines and can be explored by anyone already familiar with a Web browser.

Even for those on continuing contracts, such as this writer, it's not possible to do everything that can be done with virtual worlds. I kept my annual review in mind when Claudia, a talented designer for landscapes and buildings, offered to work on Usher in Second Life if I could only move it to another parcel at the GCU sim. She assured me it would take little time.

I said no. Beyond a bit of landscaping I'll do when classes here end for the year, I have no interest in spending any more time on Usher. I won't be teaching with it or being evaluated for that teaching for at least two years. I get zero credit for any other school using this resource that I brought back as a courtesy to those interested in it. In any case, in two years, Second Life may not even be in business. OpenSim's grids will. So will Apple, and in the coming academic year I plan to test the iPad as an e-reader for every text in a 200-level literature course. We have a grant to loan students the tablets, and unlike my last section taught under that course number, there will not be any virtual-world content in the course.

Of Time and Tools

Older Web technologies labor under many of the burdens listed, but they do so with a singular advantage for content creation. At a recent presentation on digital video, a tenure-track colleague in business admitted that the students in his entrepreneurship course enjoyed making documentaries. They also, however, needed to start their own small businesses as a class project. They preferred the latter, and he's considering digital stories as an alternative to the time-consuming work of filming and editing documentaries.

None of his students complained about lacking the tools needed.  Most of us have software for content creation we need on our laptops and we've used them for other purposes. With my colleague at Furman, in the course of about 20 hours' work, we got materials prepared on thesis formation and Toulmin Analysis.  We used the collaborative spaces of Dropbox and Google Documents to make this happen. When I needed to author new materials my students and I opened Dreamweaver, iMovie, and Photoshop.

If Maya or Blender or SL's building and scripting tools were to become easier to use and more commonly used, perhaps we'd see more uptake.

Oxford Bows Out, The Smaller Schools Take the Stage

While I'm not saying goodbye to teaching with virtual worlds, I am scaling back like many colleagues from schools like mine. There is hope coming for virtual-worlds proponents, however.

In a rather desultory way, I tried to track down a reference about small, and "hungry," schools being the ones to lead the way in virtual worlds. Oxford University gave up on CSteph Mariner's World War I Poetry simulation; Oxford has nothing to prove, I suppose. CSteph found a new sponsor. Increasingly, these sorts of sponsors are not places like Oxford or even my up-and-coming liberal-arts university.

Schools like mine, eager to make their mark among selective private colleges and universities, have a vested interest in being innovative. We can manage that, however, without the investment of faculty and staff time needed for excellent teaching in a virtual world. Instead, we can provide Millennnials with interactive learning experiences using off-the-shelf 2D Web technologies.

I would look to the smaller schools, the community colleges, the less-well known state universities for leaders in virtual-worlds learning. This is why Indiana's Ball State and not Purdue is running Blue Mars now.

Some schools don't expect their faculty to publish. They do assess innovative teaching and good evaluations, and I hope that will spur more of these colleagues to try virtual worlds over a summer's break or as an after-hours hobby, as they consider bringing in students.

And with that sort of start, the Internet 3.0 revolution may..just may..come to class in the near future.

Update: I am eating a most enjoyable helping of Crow, thanks to a notice by Sitearm at the SLED list. Forsyth County Georgia has signed a contract to bring OpenSim technology to every one of its 35 schools and, potentially, 38000 students.

Look to such innovators, far from Oxford or the liberal-arts universities of the States, for innovation in 3D immersive learning.

First Simulation in New Second Life House of Usher

Location: Virtual House of Usher

"What do you think of our home, my friend?" I asked this in character as Roderick Usher, as three students in Rawlslyn Francis' writing course at Florida State College at Jacksonville completed the simulation.

"It's big," one of my "old friends" answered, in character.

The SL build is the same size as the House at Jokaydia Grid, but I've made a few tweaks to the structure to add some interesting small rooms. That may well add to the sense of size.  Since I've not let furnished all the rooms, I improvised a bit of Usher madness when Roderick showed a guest an empty room and said "this is your room. I just had it cleaned."

"Where is the bed?" I was asked, so I answered "oh, in the corner," then wandered off in a daze.

I hammed it up a bit, and Professor Francis, in the role of Madeline, did a good job of her end of the roleplay.  I used an SL pistol to fire rounds at the rats in the Crypt, pretended to not hear obvious noises or startle at others no one else heard. In the end, my sister and the guests left me locked in the innermost vault of the family Crypt, where Roderick stood, by the door, mumbling variations of the password he'd forgotten.

This was good fun for one and all. The group did not find some of the new props and seemed hard pressed to find the clues notecards put everywhere. I don't quite know why, since my Richmond students bordered on the rude in seeking them out to "solve the mystery."

I had time to quickly send each student a motive for their visit, and two of them did well exploiting this during the simulation.

The short orientation out of character that my class had might have accounted for this difference. One of the visitors last night had only been in SL once before. She IMed me that she was struggling with the user interface, but I left enough hints that, in the end, she came up with the secret password to open Madeline's tomb.

I look forward to a guest post by Professor Francis here, soon.

Second Life Teaching for Students With Disabilities

Location: Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable

I ran a transcript of a talk by Georgia Tech faculty members Robert Todd and Chris Langston. VWER moderator Grizzla Pixelmaid moderated.

 The information is very useful and provides a good case for using virtual worlds for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. Special thanks to Grizzla for pulling this event together on Feb. 2. Readers can get the full transcript here.

Creating Claustrophobia in a Build

Location: Attic, Virtual House of Usher

I'm close to finishing the SL build, at least to the point where I'll open the doors for visitors. Later, we will schedule a few events with our Usher actors.  I wanted, first, to address some concerns that my last group of students had in the OpenSim build.

See the chest to the left of my avatar? It's way too big, and I cannot resize it.

Normally, I'd build something or do without, but here, I  decided to "leave it big" (also letting me pull out an old inventory item we liked before).

Students noted that the House in Jokaydia Grid was not cluttered and crowded enough, and in both OpenSim and SL builds run bigger, with taller ceilings, than most real-life spaces.  That's the fault of 8' tall avatars and the clumsy way the camera follows  us when we move.

To create claustrophobia in wide-open spaces, I have tried a few methods to "trick the eye." These reverse the process I wrote about for creating the illusion of vast distance. Notably:
adding low-prim partitions and obstacles in rooms

• splitting some Jokaydia-Grid rooms into two rooms in SL
•  living with the jumbo-sized SL items, or making some things a little larger than to-scale. That way, space gets crowded!
• tinting distant items slightly darker to add complexity to the space. This also keeps the build from being too bright, a complaint by a few of my students last term.
• adding prims, such as rafters in the attic, that lower the ceiling without making the camera bounce around when an avatar walks.

In doing these things--and I am sure I will find more techniques!--I continue to be amazed at the low-cost affordances of building in SL or OpenSim. While some educators are tempted by Minecraft or Unity 3D, I would ask them to consider the outcome desired.

For now, at least, for low-volume simulations SL and OpenSim suit my needs perfectly. I've been back to the Trident Main Store again and again for items I cannot or do not wish to build. Unlike some of the mesh items from Turbosquid that John Lester showed me for building, the costs have been trivial, a few thousand Linden Dollars total.

Students and Academic Roleplay: Some Responses

 
Location: Virtual House of Usher, Second Life

The work in Jokaydia Grid last semester gave my students the chance to sound off about roleplay. I was pleasantly surprised how many of them slipped into character. In a post last month, I looked at ideas students had for improving future expeditions to the House of Usher: new settings, characters, effects, and props. In this post, I share some reflections about what students felt they did well to make the improvisational roleplay work, or not.

My student Elon, who is drafting an academic article about the nature of story in the game Mass Effect, replied a great deal with useful information. Like a good academic, he's drafting ideas for the later project.

• Logan: students were required to think critically and put effort into the simulation if they expected to gain a better understanding of the story, and quite possibly change the story altogether within the simulation.
•  Elon: In order to be a proper role-playing character, the user has to continuously maintain the world’s setting and authenticity. To do this, I had to first find out about the House of Usher by reading the story, and then I had to carefully maintain who I was within the simulation.
• Emily:  A character must be created and maintained, usually conforming to some specific guidelines but otherwise left up to the player. For example, my character was given a motive of holding a grudge against the Ushers due to the fact that they had denied her a loan. 
• Elon:  I decided to tell Roderick I admired his paintings and wanted to wander around a bit. I still couldn’t find the family papers. I was panicking by the time Roderick called for us to see our quarters, but luckily Mark drew Roderick away to explore the island with him. This gave me the opportunity to find the papers, detailing his family history and more information about the nature of the land.
• Emily:  If my character had not chased Roderick out into the swamp, then [a major clue] would not have been found. Since my partners were convinced at the time that Roderick was evil, it is likely that the ending of the story would have played out altogether differently if I had not possessed that proof of his innocence.
• Elon:  The interactive experience isn’t purely just with the game engine, but also with other users . . . . The result is an experience where everyone has their share of invested time, choices, and manipulations of the plot.

OpenSim Exam: Cautionary Tale, Happy Ending

Location: Jokaydia Grid, Virtual House of Usher

With some glitches along the way, six groups of students completed their final exams, or at least the immersive experience upon which they'll base a take-home essay exam.

It all began very poorly, and that's a warning to those working in OpenSim for classroom work critical to students' grades. The first day, the grid would not load, but I was in luck: the one student in the lab happily delayed his journey to the House of Usher and joined a group later in the week.  Jokay Wollongong, our grid manager, was thenceforth online for every exam: thank God. We had a serious crash later in the week, but Jokay restarted the region and we all relogged.  In fact, we roleplayed the disorientation within the scope of Poe's story, and odd things do happen to Poe's characters.

The culprit for our crash may be the old server software that runs Jokaydia Grid. Jokay cannot fix that, but the owners of the servers at Reaction Grid can. The good news is that Reaction Grid plans an upgrade next week. I'll hold them to this...I want to restore hypergrid availability to our build.

A word about the talented folks at Reaction Gird: the company has switched emphasis in recent months to Jibe virtual world technology. Jibe is promising for ease of use and the ability to run inside any Web browser. On the other hand, it's not for those who wish to build collaboratively in-world and in real time with students. That's a killer app for my use of virtual worlds. Jibe's protocols for 3D object design, like those of SL's recently introduced Mesh technology, are beyond my and my students' skills; Richmond lacks enough advanced arts students who might wield Maya or Blender.  And there is no incentive for faculty here to learn.

On the other other hand, prim-work in OpenSim or Second Life are within my skills set and those of the student-builders I train, often in teams working together, so that's where I'll stay.

As for getting hypergridding back? It offers special affordances for educators. That, after all, is how edutech works: we share and link to each other.  Even Blackboard, the course-management behemoth, is now moving to a more open model with the arrival of a "share" button.

The closed-grid model, on any platform, is that of the video-game world. It protects IP and functions for gamers and socializers, but it's not best for many of my colleagues in education. I give my own content away with Creative-Commons licensing or in the Public Domain. We are even considering whether we have tech support, locally, to host an OpenSim grid on our campus, as schools such as the University of Bristol are doing as they pull their work out of Second Life.

As we move forward to new engagements in an OpenSim grid or Second Life, I still need more data. From my students' essays, I plan to gather data for an article about effective educational roleplay and types of student roles. But I've already learned one lesson: without Jokay Wollongong's hands-on help, I'd never have trusted Reaction Grid's old version of OpenSim for something as crucial as a final exam.

Next up, I'll finish the Usher series from Jokaydia Grid with reflections by the students, from their exam essays. And a surprise twist right out of Poe: Usher is coming back to Second Life!

Virtual Worlds A Distraction? A Reply to Jon Himoff

 
Location: Reading Jon Himoff's Blog From The Ivory Tower

It has been a while since I've written about Rezzable's work, but I came across a post by Jon Himoff, the CEO, in which Jon asks,

"In the age of Facebook, do avatars add value or are they time-consuming distractions?"

I replied at length at his blog, but I'd like to repeat what I said here.

I'd argue that Facebook is more likely the distraction...students rarely, on my campus, use social networking for course-work. Avatar-based virtual worlds, on the other hand, provide an unparalleled ability to build simulations, Jon. Ask the US Army about MOSES, for instance.

Having just finished a final exam project in an OpenSim grid, my class loved the exerience because they were helping to shape what future classes will do. 15 of my 17 students opted for the OpenSim exam/improv session, and they had fun and learned more about the subject matter by seeing it, and more importantly, interacting with it, in 3D.  A number of observers have noted how users don't mind less-than-photographic verity in online games. We don't need "serious game" level graphics if Millennial students understand how the experience links to goals and outcomes in courses. Every demographic study of that age-cohort showed exactly this finding.

That was always the promise of something like Rezzable's Virtual King Tut experience. It saddens me that you moved on from a great bit of work that never got the marketing it merited.

Virtual worlds are a niche technology, not one for corporations to fatten the profit line. But that's not the mission for institutions of higher ed. We are in the business of helping students develop critical-thinking and content skills so they'll be better citizens and employees (in that order). I'd agree that the technology was over-hyped mid-decade, and many educators rushed in themselves, without clear pedagogical goals.

As the decade continued, and Internet use meant students using mobile devices, the niche continued to be ruled by firms with gaming and I.T. experience. Educators in the niche, however, began gaining skills to develop and deploy virtual worlds locally or in hosted settings. The emphasis could then shift to how to apply best practices to teaching, instead of how to make the tech stable. Truth be told, as with Web 1.0 and 2.0 sites, in a few years we won't need corporations to help or even host the content.

But then, many specialized apps on campuses work that way. Virtual worlds will be but another of them. They may never be mainstream, but that's not important. Mathematica and GIS software are not mainstream, either.

More on Motives & Missions

 
Location: Peeking Behind the Stage Curtain

I recently wrote of a change to this iteration of the Usher experience: my students all received a motive and a mission before they began their "expedition" to meet Roderick and Madeline.

Students liked this, as we had discussed the literary idea of "backstory" in class. We considered how, for popular fantasy series such as the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter novels, readers come to realize that a fictional world existed long before the events and it has influenced current events mightily.  Thus Aragorn's Numenorean blood has a history, as does the Ring itself. In the case of really strong television series like Mad Men or The Sopranos, backstory helps flesh out the actions by major and minor characters on screen.

Poe adhered to his own rules for short stories: he had the right, as he invented the genre. "Usher" is a self-contained world, with references to other texts, real and invented for the story. The Ushers and their problems, however, exist in a sort of vacuum. We have hints of ancient family history, some of it dark, but unlike Tolkien's world, we don't get to hear any "stories within the story," though the poem "The Haunted Palace" appears in its entirety inside "Usher."

That's because a short story, like a one-off sitcom episode, has little backstory: we get a set piece that can stand independently of any world revealed in little bits. The short nature of the narratives prevent such complexity.  All we need to know is that William Shatner's character sees a gremlin on the wing of an airliner in the classic Twilight Zone episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 feet," and off we go with Shatner's over-the-top performance.

Lacking Rod Serling's voice or a television studio's resources, I decided to employ these motives and missions. Note that neither I nor the actress playing Madeline knew who got what, and Madeline was partly aware of one motive (I sent part of it to all of the folks in her role).

Here they are, as chosen randomly by students:

Motive: A man was drunk in Whitby’s pub, the Three Tuns. You saw him pay for his tab with a gold coin. The publican (pub owner) let you look at it, after the man stumbled out. It was a newly minted gold sovereign, enough to cover pub-bills for a month. The publican said “The Ushers have a lot of gold. That’s their man-servant, Jenkins.”

Motive: Madeline was once engaged to your brother. It was a secret between her and him, until he told you. She broke the engagement off without any explanation. Your brother, heartbroken, went off to serve as a Colonial officer in Africa and died of malaria. You’ve always been curious.

Motive: You hold a grudge against the Ushers. Their father, Sir Howard Usher, refused to loan your family money, despite their being old friends. The last of the family fortune is long gone. You have kept up a correspondence with Roderick, and from hints in it you learned, over a year ago, that Roderick too is facing financial ruin.

Motive: You had a sister who began to fall asleep at midday. Eventually, she began sleepwalking. She died when a doctor’s medicines went awry and she never awoke. You suspect that your sister might have had her body stolen by ghouls who sell such to the medical colleges in London. From Roderick’s letter, you fear something might befall your old friends…the men who steal bodies have been very active in Yorkshire.

Motive: You are from Cornwall, in the Southwest of England. You knew the Ushers years ago, and have kept up correspondence with them sporadically. A local family, the Ennis family, lost a son, Colin. He was a sailor killed late last year when his ship ran aground…on the island where Roderick and Madeline Usher live.

Mission: Find a way into Roderick’s room and look for family papers.

Mission: Explore the island. You all took ship to the island from Whitby, Yorkshire. A man also staying at your lodging and hearing of your destination, said “there are spirits and secrets outside that old house, and riches too from…pirates in the olden days.”

Mission: You are interested in shipwrecks. You heard about the wreck of the Grampus on this island late last year.

Mission: Explore the Ushers’ book collections. You know that the Ushers own many rare books, and you collect old books yourself and make a tidy sum trading and selling them.

Mission: Find what you can about the medicines Madeline is taking for her illness.
Special thanks to my students and the actors in the role of Madeline! Back to grading...

House of Usher: Motives & Missions for Online Roleplay

 
Location: Ready for Final Exam

When you play a traditional MMO, there's killing stuff, roleplay, and "leveling up." So in educational roleplay, with only the middle element, how to motivate participants?

I would love to have the time to commission a HUD for Nevermore Island in Jokaydia Grid, but it was enough to get a House of Usher "up from the ashes" of the Second Life build in 10 months time. Students in my "Invented Worlds" course opting to do the take-home final begin exploring and interacting with Roderick and Madeline tomorrow.

When I last tried this with one of my classes in Second Life, I chose to give each student character a roleplaying goal, such as "find out if Roderick is giving Madeline any medicine" and a beta-test goal of evaluating some element of the 3D build.

This time, that last goal gets moved to the exam essay, due some days after trip to Nevermore. Meanwhile, I came up with an appropriately gamelike metaphor for each student: a motive, either  benevolent or even hostile to the Ushers, as well as a mission to discover or recover something from Nevermore.

This approach will be fun for me, in the role of Roderick, because I will assign said motives and missions randomly from two hats passed at the start of each session. Neither the actress playing Madeline nor I will know what each student gets, and I will not comment on them if asked. Moreover, I will encourage each student not to tell the one or two other students present in the lab, where all of us save Madeline will be for the expedition.

Were Linden Lab to cut tier drastically, and let me bring in an OAR file (my requisites for returning this work to Second Life) I could merge this pedagogical approach with one of the combat-system HUDs available in SL. Some include effects for drowning, fire, or falling.

I don't want the experience to turn into a violent game, but having a working pistol or sword about could add to the fun considerably. After all, folks die in Poe stories all the time, and student mistakes could then become fatal.  I'd also want to add some scripted non-player characters such as a hermit, a ghost, and perhaps a couple of hostile wolves in a remote corner of Nevermore Island. Those will wait for OpenSim to catch up with SL's technology. I'm excited by the promises Rod Humble has made about gaming feature coming to SL's default interface, but the cost for a robust sim-wide build are too steep.

After April 2012, I may have to decide again about grids. Reaction Grid has not updated its OpenSim software, and I want features available on newer grids such as reliable hypergridding. I'm hoping that Jokay and her customers can put some gentle pressure on Reaction Grid to make the move, as they seem more intent on support Jibe, a lovely 3D technology but beyond my coding-and-design skills at present. Please don't suggest I move to Jibe: given the weight this work gets in my annual evaluation, I'm not going to take time to learn new 3D apps. I get more credit for an article or new course than for any immersive 3D work, and that's unlikely to change.

Wherever the build goes, after this semester Nevermore will be open, by appointment, for groups or individuals who want to RP in Poe's setting.